


Toll

by silverr



Category: The Last of the Wine - Mary Renault
Genre: Afterlife, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Deathfic, Irony, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-22
Updated: 2018-10-22
Packaged: 2019-08-06 03:35:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16380626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silverr/pseuds/silverr
Summary: I know—though I know not how—that he is Charon the ferryman, which means that the river is the Acheron… but my mouth is empty, and no coin rests on my lips.





	Toll

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fawatson](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fawatson/gifts).



I am on my back, my eyelids made of lead, an ember lodged in my collarbone. Above me wind-torn clouds flicker like a whirling banner, while to either side the yellow walls of the City loom, traitorous, threatening to topple and crush me.

I close my eyes and find myself elsewhere.

The land around me is empty, as featureless and as gray as ashes in a dead hearth. No trees break the horizon; no clouds soften the sunless orange sky. My feet are wet and cold; when I sit up, I see my heels were dragging in the shallows of a phlegm-colored river.

I am alone. Past my feet, wisps of steam rise from the surface of the water, creeping and twisting, reaching for me like a lamia, spreading to flood the ground with a deadly blanket.

I scramble backwards up the bank, then stagger to my feet as the vapors above the river thicken into a column. Five breathless breaths go by, five silent heartbeats, and then a ragged figure breaks through, a rag-clad ancient with stringy hair, poling a boat toward where I stand on the bank.

I know—though I know not how—that he is Charon the ferryman, which means that the river is the Acheron… but my mouth is empty, and no coin rests on my lips. Did no one lay me to rest? Am I even now a flyblown corpse, desecrating an alleyway of the City? I think I hear Alexias calling my name, but when I try to shout back, to let him know I am here, I have no voice.

Charon braces his boat against the current.

I assure him that surely someone is even now performing the rites for me. I would not be so quickly forgotten, stranded here for eternity.

Would I?

Charon points. Something is moving along the bank. 

A moment later a hulking form coagulates from the fog, a creature of blood and clay, muscled to the point of grotesqueness. Sweat drips from its glistening body; where the drops fall, scorpions emerge.

I cannot move as it lumbers toward me; I am helpless even as it seizes me around the neck and forces me to the ground, pinning me with its knee. "Is that all?" it demands, bending low to taunt me. It reeks of feces and rotting flesh. "Will you surrender so easily?"

Its voice is that of Sostratos. Once again fear and self-doubt uncoil in my belly, as they had at the Isthmian Games so long ago.

No. I will not let myself lose to him a second time! I must find a way to throw him off—

… and then I am back in the City. A face is above me. Alexias? His eyes are mirrors.

Happy that I am not yet a corpse, I squeeze his hand and say, "Take care of the child."

He nods. I know he will keep his word: his love for me will live on in tenderness for Thalia.

"What will you leave him?" he asks.

I would say, _The memory of each twilight hour we spent on a hill, and the taste of figs, and the sound of my breath in your ear, and my arm across your shoulder. The fierce joy of the mind that Sokrates awoke in us; the fellowship of battle; the legacy of peace;_ but then I worry that what is truest needs no words, and might be tarnished by enumeration, so I say only, "Whatever there is."

He lifts my hand to show me the simple ring he had bought for me in Samos, which I had worn even after my marriage. I pull at it, but my fingers have no strength.

I hear a fanfare. "Is that for us?" I ask. When he tells me yes, I reassure him that all must be well.

My words address an empty sky. The golden walls of the City cup the blinding blue like an invocation.

On the riverbank, Phaedo comes to me and fills my hands with coins.

.

.

_posted 29 October 2018; rev 2 Nov_


End file.
